The mayor, however, stopped short of endorsing the eviction moratorium advocates have demanded. He also announced that the city would put a six-month pause on lien sales for outstanding city debts owed by property owners.
City Hall said the office will coordinate across agencies to flag suspicious property filings, work with law enforcement, conduct outreach, connect homeowners with legal help and improve data-sharing. Mamdani said it would also explore city- and state-level legislation related to deed theft.
Mamdani created the Office of Deed Theft Prevention via executive order, and will be housed within the Department of Finance. It will be led by Peter White, a longtime homeowner assistance attorney at Access Justice Brooklyn.
Hizzoner framed the announcement as a response to a broader crisis, not just to this week’s events. Asked about the timing after Ossé’s Wednesday arrest during a protest over an eviction in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mamdani said the office had been in development “for months” and traced it to his campaign promise.
What the new deed theft prevention office will do
Speaking in Bed-Stuy, Mamdani said more than 3,500 deed theft complaints were filed in New York City between 2013 and 2023, primarily in Brooklyn and Queens, citing Attorney General Letitia James’ office. He said 517 complaints were registered in 2025 alone, up from 149 in 2023, and tied the issue to what he described as the broader loss of Black New Yorkers from the city.
He said the office would work with the Commission on Human Rights, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Attorney General’s Office and district attorneys, among others, and would be tasked with both prevention and response.
White, the new director, said the office would focus on three main areas: deed fraud identification, prevention, and correction and remediation. He said many of the people most vulnerable to these scams are seniors in Brooklyn and Queens and said the office would help coordinate the work of attorneys and housing professionals already assisting homeowners.
The event doubled as a show of political support from elected officials and advocates who have been pressing the issue for months. James called deed theft “a heartless crime” and said the 2023 state law criminalizing it gave prosecutors jurisdiction to pursue such cases and “pauses eviction proceedings with a deed theft case that is pending, so that families can stay in their homes and justice runs its course.”
She also called for expanded legal representation for homeowners and for cease-and-desist designations in central Brooklyn.
Ossé, who appeared at the event, said his office had worked with Mamdani and his team to help conceive the new office and called the announcement the result of “pressure, advocacy and organizing.” He described deed theft as an “epidemic” in central Brooklyn and said the office was a sign the city was finally taking the issue seriously.
Speaking to reporters, Mamdani declined to relitigate the specific Bedford-Stuyvesant case that led to Ossé’s arrest. Asked about the attorney general’s prior determination that the dispute was a property matter rather than deed theft, he said he would leave the “exact terminology” and legal determination to those charged with prosecuting it, but said the episode was “a glimpse into a much larger crisis” affecting homeowners across the city.
However, AG James, in speaking to The Judge Street Journal after Friday’s event, backed up Ossé’s claim, saying “it originated from deed theft, but it was an eviction proceeding.”
Mamdani punts on endorsing eviction moratorium
Attorney General Letitia James speaks during Friday’s announcement of New York City’s new Office of Deed Theft Prevention in Bedford-Stuyvesant.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Pressed on whether he supported the eviction moratorium sought by Ossé and other advocates, Mamdani did not endorse it. He said the new office would review legislation at both the city and state levels, including that proposal, and said further action would also require involvement from the legislature and the judiciary.
Mamdani also said the office would work across the city government, including with the NYPD and the New York City Sheriff, on how the city responds to these cases. When asked about funding after a reporter noted that the current allocation appeared far below the $10 million he had discussed during the campaign, Mamdani said the office was baselined at $1 million in fiscal year 2027 and beyond, and that funding would grow as White built it out.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams also tied the announcement to a broader political message, saying “the left cares about homeowners and home ownership” and arguing that Black homeowners had long been ignored in conversations about housing and displacement.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said his office had prosecuted cases involving 73 stolen homes in recent years, including one recent conviction involving 11 homes, but said prevention and legal representation were still urgently needed because many cases become harder to unwind after years of civil litigation.
Advocate Evangeline Byers of the People’s Coalition to Stop Deed Theft called the new office a “huge step forward” and said it gave homeowners real hope in what can otherwise feel like a hopeless situation. Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman called central Brooklyn “ground zero” for deed theft and said the city, legislature, judiciary, NYPD, sheriff and marshals all needed to be “working off the same script.”
Don’t lien on me
Mamdani also used the event to announce a six-month pause on the city’s tax lien sale, the city’s main mechanism for enforcing unpaid property taxes and other property-based charges. Under that system, debt tied to unpaid charges such as water or sewer bills can become eligible for sale after one to three years and be sold to the third-party Tax Lien Trust, which then pursues collection and can put owners on a path toward foreclosure.
Mamdani, who previously worked as a foreclosure-prevention housing counselor, said no family should have to face losing a home over a relatively small debt, such as a $5,000 water bill, and said the administration would use the pause to conduct a full review of the system.
“We know deed theft is not the only thing pushing families out of their homes. There is also the tax lien sale,” he said. “We have made that decision with the intention of undertaking a full review of the system with equity at the heart of it.”
An April report from the city’s Independent Budget Office found that while most owners who receive lien-sale notices ultimately avoid the final sale, the system remains concentrated in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
In 2025, less than 15% of the eligible properties notified ended up in the final lien sale, the lowest share in the years reviewed by IBO. But 72% of liens sold on one- to three-family homes were in majority-Black and/or Hispanic neighborhoods, up from 62% in 2021. The report said those same neighborhoods have historically faced redlining, disinvestment, and predatory lending, and that the lien-sale system continues to mirror those inequities.
The IBO also found that the burden of debt has grown. In 2025, the number of liens sold on one- to three-family homes rose 77% from the last sale in 2021, while multifamily liens rose 48% and commercial liens rose 35%. Adjusted for inflation, average debt per lien sold doubled for multifamily properties and quadrupled for commercial properties compared with 2015.
The report also said nearly 600 one- to three-family homes with liens sold before 2025 were in active foreclosure proceedings as of the end of 2025, and that at least 1,008 lien-sale properties had gone through the final step of foreclosure and been sold at public auction over the last decade, including at least 214 one- to three-family homes.
James thanked the mayor for pausing the program and auditing it, arguing that selling liens to private investors often puts families on a fast track to losing their homes.
Assembly Member Stefani Zinerman also praised the halt but said she wants the tax lien sale abolished altogether, arguing that banks and government alike need to do more to invest in communities like central Brooklyn rather than leave homeowners vulnerable to predatory practices.
The pause also lands in the middle of a wider policy fight over what should replace the city’s lien-sale system. The City Council renewed the lien sale for 2025 through Local Law 82 of 2024, lawmakers in January 2026 passed bills aimed at replacing the Tax Lien Trust with a city land bank by 2029. Supporters say the measure would move the city away from the private-sector lien sale model, though the details of how the land bank would purchase and enforce liens remain undefined.
The IBO also reduced expected tax revenues by $80 million in the preliminary budget to reflect Mamdani’s decision.